


beep boop

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Series: THIS IS NOT A DRILL [3]
Category: Hockey RPF, Superstition - Superstition_hockey (Original Work)
Genre: Chatting & Messaging, Meta, Podfic Available, Work Contains Fandom Elements, superstition by superstition_hockey - Freeform, this is just to say i have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 14:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21495958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: sweatpantsnopants:And he would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for those-- wait, no, he got away with it.
Series: THIS IS NOT A DRILL [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1470569
Comments: 43
Kudos: 81





	beep boop

**Author's Note:**

> In my sole defense, September was really stressful. ...Anyway, happy November.

**chantinghome:**  
help help help

Four years later, I'm writing more in Perhaps Nope and I just realized I need to explain the steal besides "it was the sharks fault for signing Luc to a bridge contract instead of giving him 8 years right off the bat". sure, "the sharks were cheap and greedy and it bit them like a shark does" sounds great, but, ummmmmm... something something cap space percent?

**puckstothenet:**  
tbf "something something cap space percent" usually works for me.

something something a trade no one paid any attention to?

**karlsgod:**  
okay so

stop me when you heard this one

After Vegas made a cup run in its first year, all expansion teams were like "okay, so we can do that too, right? Bettman, we better do that too"

and Bettman is an evil asshole and was like "yep, sure, I will do whatever the owners want"

in this case, "the owners" being the expansion owners because they just paid 75 million american dollars to join the NHL and do not want to piss their money away on a losing team

they pissed their money away on a team that would make the playoffs the first year, dammit

and so they made rules for who and who couldn't be protected from the expansion draft, because Vegas's Cup run was a fluke but it was a fluke that needed the potential, or at least the IMAGE, of being reproducible

and you need good players for a cup run, not the dregs of the other teams, so there were lots of requirements that every protected player had to be covered under

because it wasn't enough that they could only protect some of their players, no, the nhl had to make sure that some unprotected players were still franchise-quality

think of how the pens were forced to not protect marc-andre fleury in the '17 expansion draft, except in that case, everyone knew that fleury was gonna go to Vegas as soon as the rules were posted, because the pens could only protect one goalie and they chose the other guy

Bettman wanted more players being eligible for the expansion draft, and more players being _forced_ into being eligible against their teams's will (and probably against their own will but the nhl does not give a solitary flying fuck about what the players want)

Because old expansion drafts were kind to the existing teams and crap to the expansion teams but the whole vegas situation, plus the whole expansion-teams-pay-a-fucking-ransom-to-join-the-NHL situation had to reverse that trend

No one expected the "you can't protect all your faves" and "force good players into being eligible" initiatives to lose the Sharks so big, but that was absolutely the Sharks's fault

**sacon: **  
lol yeah.

hoisted on their petard, whatever the fuck a petard is.

**karlsgod:**  
and so the issue with Chants was not the bridge contract PER SE, it was that he'd be an rfa next season, and there were specific rules about players in that situation in terms of what their cap hit was as a percent of the team's cap spending

the rule was, if your player really really is a franchise player who you wanna keep, put your money where your mouth is and PAY UP MOTHERFUCKERS

the sharks decided, instead of paying up motherfuckers, to sign Chants to a "show me what you can do" bridge contract

unfortunately for them, "show me what you can do" turned into "what I can do is be poached by the Diques because of off-season movements"

the reason you can't remember if it was LTIR shenanigans, a trade involving an AHLer, or minutia in someone else's contract is because E) All Of The Above

there's some explainer on ao3 with the math, filter on "meta" and "Luc Chantal Deserves Better" and probably also "the Sharks brought this on themselves", that should bring it up

**puckstothenet:**  
I reember that one! I tagged my bookmark schadenfreude for the flyers because lollll. 

The Chants v. Jacks draft order betting got me a sweet coffemaker from one of my friends. And the Sharks being fucked over by their own dealings and losing their first pick FOR NOTHING IN RETURN all because of THEIR OWN BAD PLANNING after only three years was icing on that cake.

**karlsgod:**  
but tldr Chants was at the cap hit percent -- aka the "we honestly promise you this is a franchise player that we are gonna keep forever and ever and not someone we wanna hang on to for trade bait" red line in the sand -- when he signed his contract

He was at it at the point when his name was submitted as a protected player, so it didn't set off any alarms there, if they were even checking at the nhl office for it. (I think it came out in one of the lawsuits that the nhl _wasn't_ checking that and was just believing the teams when the teams submitted the names? but it's been a while and I wasn't paying too much attention to that screaming because I really don't care about their ass-covering)

**sacon: **  
The nhl was checking, they just weren't _re-checking_ to make sure no one fucked themselves over. 

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
The NHL is not your safety net.

**karlsgod:**  
Thanks sacks.

He was at that cap space percent basically until... like, two months before the draft? 

And then he stopped being at the cap space percent and NO ONE NOTICED EXCEPT FOR SOMEONE IN THE DIQUES OFFICE

and they wil lnot never ever tell us who that was, because, hilariously, they don't want that person poached or headhunted by another team, those hypocrites

but I hope they gave that person a raise and, like, years and years of job security for noticing that Chants was not longer protected

Because his protection was invalid because of money, and so the Sharks could have gotten him back to being a valid protection if they'd done money things

but they didn't, because they didn't know

No one knew but that one person with a spreadsheet in the Diques office who was like, oh hey, let's grab the first round pick from a couple years ago because, hey ,turns out we can do that

NOW, if the Sharks had given Chants a contract that did not have him rfa the next year, none of htis matters, because Chants would be protected

If they had kept an eye on their own bottom line, none of this matters, etc

None of the other NHL folks on bridge contracts who were protected (which tbf was like... Jacks and two other people, because other teams were smart enough to try to actually protect their budding franchise-ers and gave them more term while staring down an expansion draft) got anywhere near falling out of the protection

It was just Chants

Because the Sharks were cheap

And that is why Luc Chantal is a Nordique, you're welcome

**puckstothenet:**  
If I ever had a chance to get an honest answer out of Luc "media training since age 12" Chantal, it would be his opinions on that disaster

Sure it's great for the fans, and it makes for amazing fic potential because storylines up the wazoo, but that guy knew years ahead that he'd be first or second in the draft, so he knew he'd be a Shark or Flyer since the lottery happened. And then all of a sudden, he turns around on vacation and he's on a completely different team. And he's not just "on a different team", since that happens to every player who gets surprise!traded. No, he's suddenly on a different team and he's suddenly THE guy for the team. He's the captain. The entire media push is around him. And he had no idea him being on that team was even a possibility and no one asked him. No one prepped him. The Sharks didn't sit him down and tell him, we're sorry but we're not gonna protect you and the chips may fall in a way that gets you moving to Quebec, that's pro hockey, no hard feelings. No, Chants found this out after the draft happened that it was something he was even needing to pay attention to. 

Gotta be serious whiplash.

And I know he plays Happy To Be Here, Gonna Give It My All, Team Player To The Max. He's Luc fucking Chantal, he only has one mode.

I'd say I guess I need to wait fr his post-retirement tell-all autobiography but by that point, assuming the Nordiques aren't as stupid or shortsighted as the Sharks, Chants will have been a dique for most of his nhl career. He's not gonna start off the bok by saying that he never wanted to be on that team and just made the most of a bad situation, grin and bear it. He'll just focus on all the cups he's won as a nordique and all the stuff he accomplished off ice. It'll be a laundry list of every single female athlete who Chants owns a signed jersey of. It'll have a recipe for his favorite protein shakes. It will not slam any single one of his teams or the decisions that put him on them. That's not who he is.

But honestly I do not think Luc Chantal wanted to be a Nordique. But then it happened and, hey, hockey's hockey.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
My favorite lawsuit detail on the timing is that the Sharks were in negotiations on another contract which would have pushed Chants even further out of the cap space percent and they were dragging their heels on it so it wouldn't be signed and finished until after the expansion draft. But yet there were no alarm bells set off for them to actually check that they hadn't already invalidated Chants. They did not bother looking. I don't know how their data is set up, but I can't imagine "what percentage of our used cap space is allocated to this person" is a difficult query for the front office to answer. But they didn't. even. bother. Even though they knew he was close to the line! Did thye think they had some kind of motherfucking *gentleman's agreement* not to take advantage of their negligence?

**karlsgod:**  
puck, I'm sort of with you, but I'm also morally opposed to sports drafts anyway. I'm also morally opposed to salary caps. It's not like if the players percent goes down, the owners then use that extra money to increase the salaries of the people who answer the phones in the front office, gimme a break.

But Bettman flogs "parity" so much that I don't even bother. They want all teams to be basically the same. And the less they can get away with paying the players, the better.

This is why I have no pity for the Sharks in this mess. If the owners want a system like this, the owners are gonna have to deal with loophole abuse. If they didn't want loophole abuse, they wouldn't write and then protect the loopholes.

You all know my feelings on ELCs, but I feel the same way about making players sign bridge contracts after ELCs to get even more cheap years. That the Sharks (and the Flyers!) signed their two best rookies to bridge contracts instead of franchise contracts, in their prime playing years... fuck 'em, they deserved to lose both Chants and Jacks.

Not that the diques wouldn't have tried to get away with the same bullshit if they could have, but they wanted Chants and Jacks, so those they'll pay. They'll just shaft other players in exchange. Fuck 'em all.

Thus endeth the rant.

But really, just imagine what teams players would go to if they actually got to pick where they could go. Because most players don't ever get that. And then some asshole in a front office picks up a phone and a player is suddenly on the other side of the rivalry, and we're supposed to boo that player for giving their all for their new team? Ugh, fuck everything. Fan loyalty can't just be to the team uniform, it has to be to the players, and with the understanding that the job has lots of downsides and players have to pretend none of them exist when they talk to the public, because no one wants to hear it, cry harder, you get paid to play a sport for a living.

And this is why I write Oliver Jackson getting his dick sucked. Beause he puts up with so much shit every time they go to Philly and all that dude wanted was to play with Luc Chantal again. But the entire structure of the NHL was built to prevent that from happening. So he gets crap thrown on him for wanting to have a say in his life and his career, in a sport that doesn't like when players have personalities or preferences.

Some fans probably would be happy if they replaced all the players with hockey-playing robots.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
beep boop

**chantinghome: **  
thanks, karl. So I've got it as Chants not even realizing it was an option, right? The cap hit percent thing wasn't anything his own agent was paying attention to? I forgot if the agents got involved in the million lawsuits.

**karlsgod:**  
His agent lawyered-up but, no, I don't think anything came of it. Chants himself might have had some grounds to do something, but like puck says, Chants professionally cannot afford to look like there's any team in the NHL he doesn't want to play for, just in case he ever ends up playing there.

The players association lawsuit went nowhere, but they are for sure 100% still pissed about it

**diquesdick:**  
The one I lost track of, but was very interested in when it got started, was the one that accused Nordiques ownership of setting up the notorious AHLer trade between the Sharks and the Avalanche, because someone was related to someone else, and _that_ could have been a big interference deal if the diques had intentionally arranged for Chants's protection to be invalidated.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
That one was settled.

For a while there was a Let's Steal Luc Chantal Lawsuit Tracking google doc. I'll see if I can find it for you.

But yeah, absolutely no one on Team Chants was monitoring the cap situation, my impression is they trusted the Sharks

They should not have trusted the Sharks

Although considering that Chants built his team while playing in the Q, that some of the ones involved get a percentage cut of Chants's earnings, and that Chants earns an order of magnitude more as the captain of a Canadian hockey team than he did as a winger in a hockey team in California... there's for sure room for some kind of conspiracy crackfic

Although to avoid sounding like I actually believe that, yeah, I'm aware that Chants made at least one major purchase while on his ELC that was funded entirely by endorsement earnings and not at all from his NHL salary. He was doing fine endorsement-wise beforehand. That boy's not hurting for cash. But there _was_ a huge jump in those earnings, that can't be ignored.

Uh oh I think I just incepted myself into this.

**puckstothenet:**  
The Mystery Of Team Chantal And The Giant Bags Of Money, coming soon to a computer screen near you?

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
lol maybe.

Pat Brisson sure has made a ton of money off of Canadian hockey superstars. Maybe his goal was to have more of those superstars actually play in Canada.

His super secret plan to encourage Chants and Jacks to fall in love, get drafted to different teams, and then switch teams under bizarre circumstances so they could play for a brand new team that didn't come in with the highest expectations. Step 4: Profit!

**absolutelynotalion: **  
Seems legit.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
And he would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for those-- wait, no, he got away with it.

**puckstothenet:**  
I dare you to try to fit this into People You Never Meet Playing Hockey At 3AM In Nova Scotia

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
haha

part 17 nearly killed me, don't make me try for a part 18

**chantinghome: **  
you had oliver jackson wander into a costum shop trying to dress like alton brown, what's harder about having his agent show up trying to dress like guy fieri?

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
...you make a reasonable point

**chantinghome: **  
And then one of them whispers, "I've arranged for the millionth capgeek descendant to close down by getting the founder hired by some baseball team. We'll have a three month window to fuck with the Sharks while the collective hockey fandom scrambles for a replacement. Everything is proprietary. The fans aren't watching. The Sharks aren't watching. It's time to.... STEAL LUC CHANTAL." And then thunder rolls through the heavens, lightning splits the sky, and the stuffed Grover muppet in the corner gives a maniacal laugh.

**karlsgod:**  
In the defense of HockeyCapChecker (why am I defending HockeyCapChecker, she asks herself in vain), the Sharks kept a couple of the key self-fuckery-dealings pretty quiet. The NHL knew about all of it, o course, and I don't know how much got told legitimately to the Diques and how much was spying. And rumors. And, like, reading entrails. But some of it wasn't put on twitter or just generally the kind of stuff fans could easily get their hands on. I wasn't watching hcc that summer but even if I had been, I'm not sure it was there in bright red font that Chants's cap hit percent had gone below the threshold. They might not have gotten that info, their contacts were always terrible and that's why they died a terrible death.

But it wasn't HCC's job to monitor that and I think Sharks fans did believe the Sharks that they'd protect fucking Luc Chantal and his cheap contract

But, yeah, sure, there should have been That One Guy who was refreshing the cap space calculators and agonizing as the number went lower and lower and sounding an alarm on twitter

But it was the off-season and there was no reason to think the Sharks were that incompetent

Sorry, didn't mean to fact-check your crackfic.

**chantinghome: **  
lol no problem.

Remember that one time CapChecker completely lost Eichel's contract info? Good times.

**puckstothenet:**  
Look, if Jack Eichel is stupid enough to sign a $0 contract, who are we to stop him? :P

**evinesc: **  
The part I'll never understand is why -- since 1) the expansion draft protection rules were published a full year before the draft, 2) the bridge contract was signed after everyone knew what the rules would be, and 3) the Sharks front office never got into an argument on if Chants was worth using one of the protection spots for, so 4) they were always gonna protect him from rules they already knew about -- why the Sharks just didn't give Chants more money. If they'd done that, they wouldn't have had to balance everyone else's cap hits to keep Chants above the line. 

It should go under the wiktionary definition for penny wise and pound foolish.

**sacon: **  
To give the Sharks the smallest bit of credit (because it's opposite day), two months after they signed Luc to a new contract, they ended up needing to make a couple trades they didn't expect to have to make, because injuries and retirements, and they paid more than they should have. And since they didn't expect those trades or that they'd end up trading at a disadvantage, they didn't realize they'd end up with two dmen who got paid more than their existing dmen. Plus they got completely blindsided by thinking they could re-sign Wagner for cheap but then he jumped ship to the KHL the week before training camp and they spent to replace him, too. And they had to keep back salary on some other guy whose name I couldn't remember even if I was looking at it. None of this was in their budget when they did their math for the bridge contract.

There was a _lot_ of cap weirdness going on with the Sharks early on in the season that they didn't expect when they signed the bridge contract.

It wasn't so much that one trade after the cup final that pushed them over the edge. It wasn't LTIR. It wasn't them forgetting the fine print in Kell's contract. It was that they were a lot closer to the edge than they'd expected to be, but they didn't realize they were close, because they didn't think they'd be there and they didn't think to check, because when they signed the contract, they knew they had breathing space. They didn't realize they'd run out of breath.

All the Diques needed to know from the nhl transactions line was the moment when the Sharks tipped, and since the Sharks could have tipped at lots of different points, it's even possible that the diques front office could have bet that the Sharks had tipped, _knew_ they had tipped, and hadn't told anyone in hopes that the Diques wouldn't notice, and so the GM tried to psych them out by calling Chants's name at the draft, not knowing for sure that Chants was grab-able, and then they got away with it because they ended up getting lucky and being right

What the Diques did right was remember that Chantal was closer to the edge than Jacks, Park, and Machado were when they signed and then keep an eye on him just in case the Sharks were stupid. And it paid off.

I'm a conspiracy theorist and think the Diques arranged the Avs trade to give themselves wiggle room, but yeah, they didn't need to. The Sharks hooked themselves on their own fishing line.

**evinesc: **  
And yet the Sharks could have prevented all of this if they'd just paid Chants more.

**sacon: **  
Yep.

They had the power. They had the opportunity. They let him slip away.

Brisson came to the negotiating table asking for 8 years, 12.5 million. The Sharks were the ones who freaked out about big numbers and suggested a bridge contract.

The Sharks are also the ones who signed every other contract that fucked up the percents.

The Sharks are the ones who backloaded Kell's contract thinking they wouldn't have to pay him, but then had to pay him.

The Sharks did not need any help in fucking themselves.

It would just be really satisfying to me if there were evil geniuses in the Diques front office nudging them along into their bad decisions, like a back-up chorus of doom.

**diquesdick:**  
Wasn't there also a conspiracy theory that the Bettman deliberately didn't tell the Sharks that they'd crossed the threshold because he wanted to make sure the Diques got Luc Chantal, or that Bettman was the one who told the Diques that Chantal was exposed?

**puckstothenet:**  
My personal life philosophy is to never give Bettman credit for anything.

**karlsgod:**  
If Bettman knew, he wouldn't have found it out himself. Someone would have told him. And then it would have gotten out to the other teams. If Bettman knew, the Sharks would know.

Unless we wanna push this conspiracy theory into the Sharks letting Chants go, in which case, I have a gif of a fist fight for you.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
It's always time for gifs of people literally fighting over who gets to be Chants boss.

**chantinghome:**  
How about this? It was never supposed to go this way, Chantal thought. He'd had the personal assurance of everyone who'd ever looked him in the eye while shaking his hand that he was gonna be a Shark for life. He'd been told that no one would throw away a talent like him. He'd been told he'd be taken care of. But standing on a beach, listening to his mom on the phone, he wonders why he'd believed that. No, he wouldn't mind going home. He wouldn't mind being closer to his grandmother. There's nothing _wrong_ with Quebec City. But it's not San Jose and he'd been living his life expecting to go home to San Jose. He'd thought he'd known who he'd be playing with. He thought he was going to have an A on his chest. Now he knows he's going to have a different uniform and a C.

For a moment, a raw, rasping, grating feeling moving through his chest, he wonders if he can sue the Sharks. But the moment pass. Jackson slides his arm over his shoulder as Chantal listens to his mom tell him that she's booking him a flight home, that she's gonna make sure he has what he needs. Chantal hangs up after giving his love to his mother and then looks at his husband. Chantal is going to be a Nordique. Fuck that. If Chantal has to do that, then he's bringing Jackson with him.

He isn't doing any of this alone anymore.

**karlsgod:**  
*applauds*

**diquesdick:**  
You know, I've been wondering. Say the Diques go to Philly and say, "we want Jacks and we're willing to deal." What's even on the table for the trade? They can't do it before their first season, they have nothing to give but cash. Would they promise to take bad contracts away from Philly while also taking Jacks?

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
If the Diques said, we'll take bad contracts and Jacks, and give you Budnikov and two conditional picks, Philly would have said yes so fast, they'd call it a robbery.

**evinesc: **  
Did Jacks have a no trade clause in Philly?

**karlsgod:**  
Nope.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
Imagine if he'd had one and refused to waive it to get dealt to the Nordiques. Imagine the angst fic. Imagine Luc Chantal's face. Imagine his beautiful, beautiful tears.

**chantinghome:**  
Updated gift of the magi: Nordiques and Flyers do one-for-one trade Chantal for Jackson.

**sacon: **  
oh no.

the pain.

**chantinghome:**  
For the Trade Deadline, all Chants wants is the chance to play with Jacks again. He's overjoyed when he is told they've arranged a trade for him to Philadelphia. Little does he know, down in Philadelphia, Jacks is getting a similar announcement.

**diquesdick:**  
You are doing god's work.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
You know what would be fantastic on top of that? If for ~~reasons, they couldn't fly directly from philadelphia to quebec city, so they ran into each other on the layover in, idk, toronto, embraced tearfully and then snuck off together into the night and were never heard from again, the local hockey playing cryptids, only ever seen except out of the corner of your eye in hockey rinks

**karlsgod:**  
Isn't that kinda how you ended up playing hockey at 3am with Sidney Crosby?

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
dammit

that's true

**puckstothenet:**  
y'know, sometimes you read author's notes and you nod along, going, ah, yes, the eternal fan hyperbole, I know it well

and then you find out that that that hyperbole is actually understating the situation

and then nothing is ever the same again

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
it's okay puck. I' never believe the story if someone else told it to me.

**diquesdick:**  
"I wrote this while blackout drunk on my phone and never edited it and it has zero typos and makes logical sense" = utter lies

"I wrote this sitting on the freezing ground next to my ex-girlfriend's uncle's backyard rink after a hockey legend scored on me and called me weak" = somehow true

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
it wasn't her uncle, but I concede the point since I'd have to text her to ask her to explain her family to me again slowly

what can I say, sometimes your life peaks at 27 and there's nothing you can do about it

**chantinghome: **  
as legacies go, it's pretty great

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
but just imagine the angstfic potential

oh no, wait, I can make it worse

Jacks gets traded to San Jose after years of fighting for it and the NEXT DAY IS THE EXPANSION DRAFT

**puckstothenet:**  
okay I demonstrably don't know anything about the nhlpa, but in that fic, Chants digs his heels in and sues the fuck out of everybody so he can stay with the Sharks and it goes to, idk, the court of arbitration for sport, and he succeeds, right? Right?

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
no, but they meet up four years later after heartbreak and targeted tanking gets them both winding up, "washed up", in providence, where zimms takes pity on them and trades for them both for peanuts, only for them to make a miraculous hockey-recovery and lead the Falcs to victory and someone buying the movie rights about the healing power of love to turn around careers as draft busts

yes yes, you are saying there is no way Chants would ever play badly at hockey on purpose just so he could be with his husband

I hear you

I don't care

**puckstothenet:**  
I love the way you cut my heart out.

**diquesdick:**  
+1

**puckstothenet:**  
okay but actually, speaking of how Luc Chantal doesn't know how to not destroy himself in the pursuit of hockey glory

Do you ever just stop for a moment and marvel at their differing media strategies?

These are guys who grew up together since childhood, best friends, married

Uf we ever find out that Luc Chantal once turned down the latest club drug because it would interfere with his macros, i would 100% believe it

**jodypoppins:**  
"Just say no, bro." - Luc Chantal, probably

**puckstothenet:**  
We get told about him going down on surfers, playing weird games with rugby players, this is a guy who does that

And in corner B, we have a guy that i swear 33% of this fandom is convinced is a sweet harmless nerd who has never had a sip of alcohol in his life

**chantinghome:**  
...he does kinda give the impression that he doesn't drink, how does he _do_ that

**puckstothenet:**  
Despite all the pictorial evidence all over the internet to the contrary

He just _seems_ like such a sweet canadian boy

But he's married to Chants and is part of this whole hippie free love cross-sport queer polyamorous backyard organic agriculture milieu

And yet

And yet

If you look just at their media saturation, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is Bad Boy Corrupts Innocent porn trope. Except that, for god's sake, in their notorious notarized ice cream agreement, Chants is the one who didn't want to eat the ice cream!

Tell me that "ice cream is not proper nutrition" kid is the bad boy. Go on, tell me that.

Tell me that kid is the corruptive influence.

**diquesdick:**  
You're right about that. The commercials they're in together are all sports-based or, like, Timmy's -- it's bland and what you expect. Their individual ones showcase their own strategies, and Luc's very bro-sports but otherwise it's aspirational: the watches, the lifestyle, the whole Live Hard Play Hard Pro Sports Thing. Whereas Jacks presents first and foremost as _nonthreatening_

**puckstothenet:**  
Yep.

**diquesdick:**  
Sometimes I wonder if this has to do with their individual sexual histories, teenage years, home lives, because I'm Like That

But Jacks has been open that he dated guys in high school and while in the Q, that is _not_ a welcoming environment for gay guys

Jacks had to do a ton of work to fit in in the locker room, to pretend to be the prototypical teenage hockey player. He had to mimic everything and consciously create protective coloration through observation and trial and error, with high stakes if he fails, because the closet sucks

And Jacks sees Chants's dad as his own father figure, but I never looked too much into the timeline because there's points where it becomes creepy stalker stuff, but if Jacks mentions it in interviews, I figure it's fair game, and his bio-dad did decide to have nothing to do with him, and during the time he was in the Q, wasn't he getting a new stepdad? So there's life changes going on, and Jacks was dealing with it all.

And then he gets together with Luc and it's happily ever after! Except I think it did leave a mark on how free he felt to express himself publicly, in a way that influences how much money he makes, because income is important and so highly dependent on pleasing other people

Luc is more free to be a wild child. Jacks will do a sportscenter commercial where he sits in the back of a conference room and reads Hitchhiker's Guide. And we all grin when he does that! But Luc would never make that commercial. Luc barely admits to reading books. Meanwhile, Jacks puts out semi-yearly reading lists and did a banned books fundraiser. 

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
It's about what aspects of their personalities they feel okay monetizing. You're right that Luc's more secure than Jacks in in terms of risk taking media-wise. I _don't_ know if that's intentional. Chants's media strategy has never struck me as the most... fully-conscious or fully-formed. He rolls with a lot. He stumbles a lot into things and rolls with it, whereas Jacks has an actual laid-out strategy. Maybe it's that Jacks just listens to his publicist whereas Luc is more impulsive? IDK if you can chalk this up to Jacks and his mom hurting for money when he was a kid, that might be going too far. Chants might just be the risk-taker in the relationship.

**absolutelynotalion:**  
Chants is self-disciplined, but that's when it comes to _hockey_, not social media

**jodypoppins:**  
I'm pretty willing to see this as a nerd kid thing rather than as a gay kid thing or a poor kid thing. I've known a lot of huge nerds (huge in physical size, they also just also happened to be huge in the nerd sense too) who go out of their way to appear as non-threatening as possible. Jacks is not the biggest guy in the NHL, but you don't need to be the size of Zdeno Chara to still be a physically overwhelming presence in a room of non-hockey players. Jacks is a tall, bulky guy. If he was going to geeky gatherings and walked in, people might have shied away. I've known guys to do things like wear bright pink or yellow or otherwise neon shirts or do things to visually indicate their lack of threat status.

**chantinghome:**  
But you know, this also sucks for Chants. If strippergate taught us nothing (it never taught us nothing, it taught us that rhythm is a dancer and so is Luc Chantal), it's that Luc Chantal has done the goddamn reading. But then he immediately covers it up. And, yeah, sure, it's funny and hilarious and lolol look at that male hockey player saying feminist things. I'm as on board with that as everyone. But it's funny because of that contrast, because this is a guy whose every third word is "bro", who gives every indication of having never given a second thought to anything that doesn't involve ice, and then he goes and pulls that out of his back pocket and shrugs it off. You don't expect that kind of guy to say the things that Chants sometimes says. You don't expect that guy to go out of his way to support womens sports, even ones that aren't hockey where you could go "oh yeah, he's being a good hockey dude and supporting the womens side". This guy goes to womens basketball games. Someone snapped him signing autographs at roller derby once. He's not just doing this for the good promo. He doesn't just "walk the walk". These are his actual opinions and preferences.

What if we built our idea of Luc Chantal from that instead of from everything else? Would it look more like Oliver Jackson? Would it look more like someone who is absolutely dating that nerdy kid who knows everything there is to know about ST:TNG? 

And instead, we get the millionth commercial where someone dressed Chants up in a very nice tux and gave him a very nice watch and made sure to get every single angle on his cheekbones as he skates around while bad guys are in pursuit and there's helicopter noises and da-da-dums and the deepvoiced narrator goes on and on ironically about the james bond of the ice and how this watch can keep time to the exact second when a dream becomes a (hockey) goal, god I wish I was making that up

But you know what I mean. toxic masculinity remains toxic, news at 11.

**diquesdick:**  
Speaking as we sort of were as Oliver JAckson as large nerd, does anyone have the clip handy of him getting caught on mic in the penalty box singing the chorus from Banned From Argo? I suddenly need it.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
here you go

courtesy of the Banned From Hockey singalong, who keep uploading it every time ESPN fucking copyright kills it. You're welcome.

**diquesdick:**  
thanks!

**puckstothenet:**  
and we're banned from hockey, everyone! banned from hockey just for having a little fun!

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
I paid forty bucks for a rush job to get that on a shirt along with my ao3 stats for a hockey rpf panel at a con and I have no regrets 

okay, a tiny regret that that horrible article with jacks's biodad came out that morning and we made a ground rule that we wouldn't discuss it at the panel, but we kept bringing it up to vent about it and then embarrassingly say we weren't discussing it

you know who is banned from hockey and not in the fun way? Alain Jackson is banned from hockey and not in the fun way.

**karlsgod:**  
he _is_ banned from all nordiques facilities. Like, for real.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
oh really? nice!

**puckstothenet:**  
y'all can keep your *sips gatorade*. The undisputed best Protective Luc reaction gif is the deadpan, slightly menacing, "I don't speak English", spoken in English.

And then he turned around and answered an unrelated question in English and every reporter had a trauma flashback to the diques media strike and didn't ask him again about papa-in-law

god, that was perfect

**dagger:**  
I just had this dream that my dreamself was insistent was a role reversal AU and that, no, _this time_ it would be Jacks who was a folk singer songwriter and Chants was the lawyer, and my dream unspooled this whole thing about attic apartments and tea shops and then I woke up and remembered that neither one of them are journeymen singer songwriters and I didn't need to rack my brain trying to remember the words to his one single crossover radio hit and that both of them are, in fact, hockey players.

But seriously if either one of them was gonna be Leonard Cohen… it's none of them. None of them are Leonard Cohen.

**puckstothenet:**  
I think if they were musicians, Chants would want to be a frontman but he'd end up switching to, like, lifecoaching hard rockers and telling them that doing situps will solve existential ennui, and have they tried kale smoothies

**diquesdick:**  
Jacks would be a harpist. I don't make the rules.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
No, no, absolutely a cellist. 

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
I hear you about Life Coach Chantal, but I bet you he conducts. Maybe he accidentally did it in high school once and now he's got hooked.

**puckstothenet:**  
And he meets Jacks because Jacks is a session musician for some bombastic background for this metal band's latest album and their eyes connect over the score. And then Chants takes him home and feeds him pancakes.

**chantinghome: **  
I'm so jealous, dagger. All I got from sleep last night was waking up having rolled too far onto my arm and it had fallen asleep and gone painfully tingly.

**dagger:**  
I woke up _so confused_ though. My brain had really convinced me that them being hockey players was some kind of AU.

And meanwhile in the real world, if you ask Luc what he'd do if he wasn't playing hockey, you can watch his brain bluescreen. "Not... hockey? Then other kind of hockey thing. Yes. I'd do other kind of hockey thing."

**puckstothenet:**  
Futurefic idea: Chants takes over for Don Cherry, but keeps the wardrobe.

**sacon:**  
No.

Nope.

**karlsgod:**  
...I wish I knew how to draw, because I want to see what that would look like.

**sacon:**  
It would look like my nightmares.

**evinesc:**  
Were you reading any role reversal before bed?

**dagger:**  
Huh, yeah, actually. I'm midway through a reread of Sharks!Jacks. Just up to the part where Jacks gets the phone call that Luc got traded to Dallas. No wonder my brain went down that road.

**chantinghome: **  
"It's chill. Every good love story must eventually wind its way through Texas, it's the law." THE BEST

**dagger:**  
It's awesome ♥

**diquesdick:**  
Oh, hey, great idea. I should do a reread, too. Captain Jackson gets me every time. 

**puckstothenet:**  
Luc is the best A. And best supportive husband. And best courier-of-snack-food.

**dagger:**  
oh and scrolling up, another thing to add to the Things You Would Not Expect Someone With Luc Chantal's Media Presence To Know But Yet He Does list: a friend of a friend got to talking to him once in a hotel bar. She's some kind of archaeologist or -adjacent and has a passing familiarity with his mom. Chants was able to keep up the conversation at a very detailed level. We forget sometimes how smart Chants's parents are and the kind of home life he must have had with them. Academic Jacktal AUs are a lot more plausible than Luc Chantal's sweatpants interviews would lead you to believe.

**puckstothenet:**  
I have a hard time, though, reconciling how he has scientists for parents and he's still so pro-fighting. I don't understand how he could (justifiably!) freak out so much about Jacks's concussion and still be so pro-fighting.

**jodypoppins:**  
Dude is large and contains multitudes.

**karlsgod:**  
multi-dudes

**diquesdick:**  
I think it's just part of hockey for him. Not to get too deep back onto my psychoanalyzing stunt, but Chants seems a guy who takes things as they are and either accepts them (hockey) or rejects them (see his twitter). Hockey for him has fighting. And if they banned fighting, maybe he'd go along with it as a new way hockey is these days? It's not like he's insisting on going out there with no pads or no helmet, he's not out there talking about the purity of the sport and how it must never change. He takes hockey really seriously and he takes hockey as it is.

Also, Chants's own injury history is generally his knee. IDK how much concussion risk plays into anything for him.

Maybe he thinks concussion = bad fight, whereas a good fight = no concussion. And if there's a bad fight, well, then you track that guy down months later and get yourself a multi-game suspension because you got blood all over the ice on purpose.

**puckstothenet:**  
So if fights go well, then no one has lasting problems, and if someone has lasting problems, clearly the problem was with that fight itself? idk, D. He's got more nuanced takes on other things than that.

**diquesdick:**  
yeah, but he's been doing hockey since he was, what, two? Might just be a facts of life thing. I can't imagine his parents never had talks with him about injuries and long term consequences. I can't imagine he never talked to Jacks about it considering The Concussion. He grew up idolizing Sidney Crosby, he of the notorious concussion history. But yet he still gets into fights, voluntarily. He _likes_ fighting.

**chantinghome:**  
And Jacks's concussion was from an illegal hit, so it was _already_ against the rules

Chants just wanted to go vigilante about it because he decided Dasker getting a suspension wasn't enough and he wanted to hurt him

Finding out they were married explained _so much_ about that whole thing, wow, yeah

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
the NHL needs some kind of leave policy for "my husband got seriously injured across the country, I'm his goddamn medical proxy, let me fly over there and caregive"

**karlsgod:**  
^ cause of the next lockout

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
You are probably right and I hate it.

Chants worked through his frustration with goals and fights. Sure would have been nice if he could have not had that frustration to begin with!

**chantinghome:**  
ngl I feel that same way every time a player's relative dies and they're on the ice the next night anyway. "It's what my relative would have wanted me to do," says the player. And factually accurate or not, "the NHL does not have bereavement leave for players" is what I hear.

**puckstothenet:**  
the show must go on, but it can go on without you. That's why you have a team with other players. I keep getting _told_ about ice hockey and team sports, I can't imagine from where and who...

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
tbf "the show can go on without you" is exactly what a lot of those players don't want the owners to see, esp the players who aren't franchise (and hell even the franchise ones with no movement clauses). 

**diquesdick:**  
"the show can go on without you, we can wait you out because your careers are short and our pockets are large" -> ACTUAL cause of next lockout

**karlsgod:**  
damn you and your accuracy

**puckstothenet:**  
"Daddy, why do you have a scoring trophy from your second year in the NHL?" "Well, sweetie, your other daddy got injured, I couldn't be there with him during the recovery, and I had a lot of feelings about it."

how do they even vote on the Hart between Chants and Jacks, they're assisting on all each other's goals. They're basically one person as far as stats are concerned. How do you separate them enough to put it to a vote for MVP?

**jodypoppins:**  
~~intangibles~~

**chantinghome: **  
aka luc's face

but also their assists on other goals, penalty minutes (Chants, darling, plz stay out of the penalty box), ice time (hard to be valuable if you're not playing), and then probably a grab bag of stats to retroactively justify their feelings. Some PHWA writers post their ballots and explain themselves. Absolutely one of them once took Luc's face into account. He said it nicer, but it really was something like "Chantal's ice presence shimmers" or idk, it was something like that. He was justifying putting Chants on his ballot in his rookie year. And then he made the finalists his second year and I don't know if anyone pointed at his face when they did that, probably just him getting the Art Ross, which at least does not invite questions about what is value.

**diquesdick:**  
a face that launched a thousand ships

**puckstothenet:**  
well, three. Four. Sometimes five.

**sacon:**  
look, you can pry my chants/temi language kink abandoned wip from my cold dead gdocs.

**puckstothenet:**  
that's legit. I would never kill your gdocs.

_my_ gdocs, otoh, is fair game for murder

**dagger:**  
that's one thing jacktal doesn't give us. How can we get language kink from this, we must have polyamory so we can fulfill all our needs

**puckstothenet:**  
it's just logic

**sacon:**  
exactly!

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
you can do jacktal language kink, you just have to do a little work to get there. posit that Chants started learning Russian from Temi as a way to focus on something other than The Concussion. Then Chants increases his distance learning for Budnikov prep, and then assume that Chez Russecois leans a lot more toward Russian than I think Hockey Wives would lead us to believe. Now Chants has Sveta and Budnikov to practice Russian with. And then Jacks shows up and boom, Chants can dirty talk him in a third language. Jacktal language kink problem solved.

**diquesdick:**  
That _does_ work. Do we know IRL how good Chants's Russian is?

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
I think it's not absurd to think it's enough to say sexy things. Could he discuss the stock market? Doubtful. Could he direct a porn movie? Maybe!

**chantinghome: **  
And if that porn movie was about hockey, I have no doubt in my mind he could do it in all his languages.

**absolutelynotalion:**  
Ah, so that's Chants's post-hockey career! I never would have thought, but it does work.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
Jacks gets a job as script writer and camera operator, but winds up also doing wardrobe, because, Luc my best bro, you don't know what clothes are, only how to wear them

**sacon:**  
Objection, do we think Jacks know anything about clothes?

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
I guarantee you he knows more than our lord of athletic pants

**karlsgod: **  
You know it's sad but true.

**reut:**  
New chapter of We Lost The Offsides War is posted! Little teaser:  
Here's the way it works. Every team but one loses. And you can't win every year. But that doesn't mean you have to get used to losing. Still, it should stop shocking him by this point. But it doesn't. Every time they get kicked out of the playoffs without the Cup, it _aches_. Every time they lose, he has to do something with these feelings. Fortunately, he has a husband to do.

feat. corsets (steel boned) and very expensive sheets (not steel boned)

**absolutelynotalion:**  
whee!

**diquesdick:**  
reut, thank you for the reappearance of Oliver Jackson's Thermal Nightgown! I admire your dedication to warmth and comfort and snuggles.

**reut:**  
All in a day's work!

**puckstothenet:**  
love how comfy Offsides is. It is very great on a day when the winter wind just punched me in the face and asked me how much I like slipping on ice

(I do not like slipping on ice)

**jodypoppins:**  
(does anyone?)

**puckstothenet:**  
(somewhere out there, Luc Chantal just sat bolt upright in bed and said "someone out there is denigrating the beauty that is naturally occurring ice")

**jodypoppins:**  
(yeah, but then his husband is telling him to come back to bed)

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
Not to get sappy for a moment, but I just love that the two of them are married. Actually married. And they snuggle in public just as much as they did before we knew they were for-real fucking.

**chantinghome:**  
+1

Even before they came out, there wasn't a no homo in their entire lives.

And they treat us pretty well.

Like, the absolute worst thing that could have happened was finding out that Chants actually was publicly cheating on Jacks the entire time

But no, they come right out and say they're in an open relationship and no one was cheating on anyone else

No angst, no drama, just a solid relationship that is strong enough to last longterm long distance

I know they hate talking about their relationship nitty gritty but they've given us just enough to make it clear it's all chill, and I appreciate the fuck outo f that

**puckstothenet:**  
Same. I've been in worse juggernaut pairings.

**jodypoppins:**  
My favorite Oliver Jackson moment was when someone asked him for long-distance relationship advice and he just said "try to see each other more than twice a season". And then posted a picture of Mako looking sad, captioned "missed my daughter". And then tried to make dog-skype a thing.

**diquesdick:**  
I got nightmare from the idea of putting a webcam in my dog's chew toys. Some things are not meant to be seen.

**chantinghome: **  
You only win when your team wins. And sometimes your team is you, your line-mate husband, your husband's four girlfriends, and however many boyfriends you have that you won't talk about because you want to protect their privacy.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
I'd kill for an episode of Hockey Wives that is just The Jackson-Chantal WAGs And HABs Hour. I wanna see their shared calendars. I wanna see logistics. Do I want this because I need this personally? No, not at all. Never. I have never scheduled two dates for one night. That never happened to me. We have never played bedroom musical chairs in this household. Everything always works out perfectly for us.

**sacon:**  
I believe you completely. But, on a whole different subject, if you were to write me that fic, I'd not only have your babies but also baby sit them.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
Hmmm. Tempting offer.

**sacon:**  
I can also make scrambled eggs.

**puckstothenet:**  
I ask only for the sake of the glorious pursuit of knowledge, but how many people can you fit onto a king size bed?

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
I'm short enough that I can comfortably lie on one horizontally with room to spare, and I sleep tight, so, like, 4 of me, maybe? They might not sleep comfortably, I have never done the science.

Kinda tempted to, now. Not sure how I'll explain this one.

**diquesdick:**  
"People on the internet encouraged me."

**karlsgod:**  
"I got nerd-sniped and everyone just watched and let it happen."

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
You did it all for the nookie.... research.

**jodypoppins:**  
I had issues once fitting three on one in a hotel room, but body types are gonna play a huge role, plus how, uh, active they're being at the time. 

There were some very pointed elbows that night.

**chantinghome:**  
Orgy tetris: coming soon to an ikea near you

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
Desperation and motivation can also play a role. How much did you all _want_ to share that bed, jody? ;)

**jodypoppins:**  
Not very much.

**puckstothenet:**  
So you're saying if you really want it badly enough, things can fit into places they were never meant to go, and you'll like it

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
Absolutely.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb? The lightbulb has to want to change.

**chantinghome:**  
As for how many fanfiction writers does it take to write an orgy...

**absolutelynotalion:**  
If the orgy also meant I couldn't see in the dark until I wrote it properly, I'd be a lot more motivated to write one.

**puckstothenet:**  
Xtreme fic writing, coming soon to a premium access cable channel near you

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
I don't know if I'd watch that, but I'd write RPF for it

**karlsgod:**  
And the RPF ouroboros gets fed yet again 

**puckstothenet:**  
Argh. The through-line of this stupid WIP is both "love is like peanut butter: if you wanna get rid of it just soak it overnight", and also "love is like glitter: it'll be around forever."

**diquesdick:**  
love is like peanut butter and I'm allergic

**chantinghome:**  
if that isn't a hit novelty song title, what have any of us done with our lives

**puckstothenet:**  
I have personally wasted mine on slash.

Wait, no, not wasted.

The other one.

**diquesdick:**  
Successful life choices?

**puckstothenet:**  
That's the one!

**karlsgod:**  
+1

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
There's worse things in this world.

**puckstothenet:**  
IDK, cmr, you don't know the kinds of things I've read.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
you can't scare me, I was in Harry Potter fandom

**chantinghome:**  
have any of us ever truly left HP fandom?

**sacon: **  
Well...

**karlsgod:**  
Harry Potter is also like glitter.

**absolutelynotalion:**  
I have questions.

**sacon:**  
How many licks does it take to get the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop?

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
African or European?

**diquesdick:**  
The butler did it.

**absolutelynotalion:**  
If Harry Potter is glitter, what's Star Wars?

**puckstothenet:**  
A deathless vampire who feeds on the souls and pain of children, defeated every ten years, only to emerge again to feast on a new generation of the unwary. Some of the former thralls of the vampire even feed their children to it ritualistically and debate furiously the best manner in which to induct their children into the cult. One popular method involves a machete.

**diquesdick:**  
(okay but machete order is fine with me)

**puckstothenet:**  
Ah! I spy a devotee of the cult!

**absolutelynotalion:**  
I now have other questions. :P

**chantinghome:**  
The cyclical cycles of franchise lifespans, where have I ever heard that before.

**puckstothenet:**  
Put money on "The Diques Can Never Rebuild Until They Get Rid Of Luc Chantal" articles for six years from now.

**diquesdick:**  
You are more optimistic than me.

**karlsgod:**  
I see we are ready for me to burst through a wall and declaim about how salary caps destroyed good hockey, good storylines, and everything that makes being a fan fun.

**sacon:**  
karl will never be happy until the top 10 draft picks are all on the same team.

**karlsgod:**  
Damn right. I want dynasties. I want dominance. I don't care about hockey surviving in places it has no support in. I am the Bad Fan. 

But primarily I just hate the idea that the salary cap is king. We lost an entire season because the NHL wanted to fuck over the players so badly, they'd be happy to lose one season's revenues to do it. Fuck 'em. People complain about how much the players make because they see the big numbers, and then teams cry poverty. Fuck 'em beyond belief. The owners aren't the ones risking brain damage for our entertainment, they're the ones cashing in on it.

**puckstothenet:**  
I think growing up a Penguins fan skewed my expectation of how normal it is for a player to buy the team and then go back to playing for it while still owning it. You say fuck the owners and my ten year old self tells you that that the team couldn't afford to pay Lemiuex, so he bought them instead.

**karlsgod:**  
If teams were owned collectively by their roster of current and former players, or if they were owned by the cities themselves, I'd probably be a lot less angry of a person than I am.

But fuck Lemieux, too, he also played the "we might move the team" hostage card. Any team that extorts money from the city or the fan base by threatening to leave, they're welcome to take their shit and go. Everything you own in a box to the left.

Anyone ever gives you an ultimatum, call their bluff and take it. They want to talk about loyalty? All right then, _them first_. We all know there's gonna be "the next lockout". Fuck 'em all. That's no way to run a lemonade stand. Threats to people's livelihoods and careers, strong-arm tactics, playing the victim to the media... the players aren't striking. The owners locked them out. The owners will do it again. The owners will take their toys and go home, move teams between cities, extort cities to pay for arenas. And we buy the product. But I'm not going to put my sympathies with the ones who wrecked it.

**chantinghome: **  
The platonic ideal of hockey: no professional teams, just players and amateurism.

**karlsgod:**  
I mean, I hate the Noble Ideal Of Amateurism as well... I just want players to get to pick what to do with their lives and get paid fairly for the value they bring.

Like, to bring back to what puck (I think) brought up earlier: no fucking way did Luc Chantal ever want to go to the Nordiques. Did he want to play with Jacks again? Yep. Did he arrange that whole scenario? Look, someone had to tell the Nordiques to offer-sheet Jacks, although god alone knows what happened there on the Philly side of things. But Chants and Jacks getting to make one (1) decision about their professional careers does not invalidate the fact that Luc Chantal did not want to go to the Nordiques, did not think he was going to the Nordiques, but had to go because the Sharks epically fucked up. And he is never allowed to complain about it in public, because that's not suitably grateful and will cost him millions of dollars if his public image suffers in that way. He can sleep with all the women he wants. He can be married to a dude. He can have backyard chickens. All that fits in, or can be rearranged to fit in, with the image of a hockey bro that he wants to project. But he can't look ungrateful. He can't look like a diva. He can't look like he'd rather go to the beach than dig out his car and that he's mad he has to. Nobody fucking thought the Nordiques would get a Cup in their second season. For all Chants knew, he was getting shoved into a crappy expansion team and wouldn't have any chance of a cup run for over a decade. Because I think we do tend to gloss over just what a disastrous wreck of an expansion team the diques seemed like they would be. They didn't even have a coach!

And Chantal had to move there, shake hands, smile for the cameras, and be the Captain. Of a team he got forced to be on. Through no fault of his own and, importantly, no way for him to negotiate the terms that pushed him there. He was a victim of the process he didn't have a say in. And he can never, ever complain about what happened to him. Oliver Jackson signed that offer sheet. Luc Chantal had a fait-accompli he had to swallow and then make the most of. Could he have held out? Could he have tried to lawsuit his way out? Could he have refused to show up for camp and tried to force the diques to trade him because he damn well wasn't gonna suit up for them? Uh, yeah, sure, right. In theory, who the hell knows. In practice, I've got a bridge to sell you. Those shouldn't have been Chants's only choices.

And all of that, all of that, I still hate less than I hate the entry draft itself. Connor McDavid's face when he found out he'd be going to Edmonton is seared into my brain, and he's still one of the luckiest ones.

**evinesc:**  
So if you want all the good players on the same teams, do you want fewer teams? I can see an argument that the NHL's diluting its product with all these expansion teams. It's adding roster spaces for players who wouldn't otherwise get to play in the NHL, do you think that's a bad thing?

**karlsgod:**  
Ugh. I don't know.

I think "playing in the NHL" as an ideal to strive to is horrible, but it's the reality. I want a lot of different leagues. I want players to have choices. Right now players get told the best thing ever is winning the Cup, and the NHL's got that now; any other North American league is gonna be seen as lesser unless the "Cup final" is a playoff between all the leagues, which is even beyond a pipe dream. The Cup only matters because of its history, and we all know how much the NHL loves to fetishize, I mean wallow in its history. If I never hear "Original Six" again... things are good 'cuz they're old. ~~Nostalgia~~.

I guess I think there's a lot of things to fix first before I'd be angry that a lot more people get to live their dream now than they did before. I can be angry all I want about the social and sporting forces that turned _this_ into the reality of their dream, or why this was ever allowed to grow this way. I can bookmark everything I want about antitrust and various disgusting things like the US supreme court deciding that baseball isn't interstate commerce because fuck labor is why. Having more players is good. Spreading the sport is good. I just don't agree that _spreading the NHL_ is unequivocally good. Because it's just done for the money, really. And I find that reasoning unsympathetic.

But I'm also not a male hockey player of appropriate age who is hoping to break into a permanent spot on an NHL roster.

But then again, neither are any of the people around the table who decided to open up expansion.

**chantinghome:**  
I think the hope re: player quality is that the more you grow the sport, the more yuo increase the population of NHL-caliber players, so the overall quality of the sport goes up. They'll tell you they aren't adding roster spots faster than the hockey world is adding good players.

**puckstothenet:**  
karl's upcoming thanksgiving post: But That's Not What I Came To Tell You About. I Came To Talk About The NHL Draft.

**karlsgod:**  
don't dare me. I'll do it.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
Realistically, if I "grow the sport" now, it's gonna be 10-15 years at least before I've got an NHL fourth liner ready to go.

So plant the tree, I guess, and come back in 15 years?

IDK. I'm not actually paying any attention to the publicity stunts around "growing the sport", except knowing that the NHL would blow off the '18 Olympics all it wanted, it was never gonna blow off the '22 ones, because of the chances of entry into a new market. So I've always approached it with a bit of cynicism. If not as much cynicism as karl.

**karlsgod:**  
Being as cynical as me takes a lot of practice.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
Practice will always beat talent, if talent doesn't practice.

**diquesdick:**  
I just got forcibly shoved into a time machine and sent back to being 7 years old, thanks for the memories, even though they are absolutely not great.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
Oh no. What weren't you practicing, D?

**diquesdick:**  
Piano. Although in my case, it was a lack of practicing and ALSO a lack of talent. When you've got nothing, you just bang the keys. But my parents were convinced I could be the next Yo-Yo Ma if only I applied myself.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
But Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello.

**diquesdick:**  
TELL THAT TO MY PARENTS.

**puckstothenet:**  
Oh dear.

**diquesdick:**  
To spite them, I learned to play the drums. Which I also played badly. But at least they didn't try to tell me to practice those in the house. And thus was the war settled. And I still can't play the piano.

**karlsgod:**  
I did a couple years of piano and I can play Heart & Soul. I have no idea why that song, above any others, was the one my teacher felt was important. I wonder if there's piano teacher memes.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
It was in the movie where Tom Hanks jumps on the keys.

**karlsgod:**  
Ah. A childhood mystery becomes clear.

**chantinghome:**  
It's an important skill to have in case you're ever spontaneously aged up and have to con your way into a job. Your piano teacher was looking out for you.

**sacon:**  
Playing piano with your feet is the most important life skill. This is why we're taught to play with our fingers. It's to keep us weak.

**jodypoppins:**  
I'm not as extreme as you are, Karl, but I do see where you're coming from. We say "well, that's sports" a lot, but don't delve much into _why_ that's sports. But nothing exists in a vacuum, and a lot of the things that are "good for the team" aren't good for any of the people in particular on the team. But the team isn't an abstract concept.

**puckstothenet:**  
I can play Chopsticks on the piano, which google tells me was also in the movie where Tom Hanks jumps on the keys. It's a conspiracy.

I'm also a lot more confident about playing piano with my feet than with my hands, because at least with my feet, no one would expect me to be able to span an octave.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
You'd probably have to twin yourself to be able to do that with your feet by yourself.

**puckstothenet:**  
New causes for cloning: improved piano skills. I'm willing.

**chocolatemousseroyale:**  
You could do it with a small foot-piano. You'd need small feet or to step really carefully, but it'd be less of a workout and you could do more with it.

**chantinghome:**  
Would the foot pedals thus be switched to being hand pedals?

**puckstothenet:**  
That logic is sound.

**absolutelynotalion:**  
Huh. I never expected my dubious claim to fame to be 'being the only person in this room who can play the piano'

**diquesdick:**  
hey, embrace your fame where you can get it.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
I'm at the Lady Catherine De Bourgh level with the piano: if I'd ever learned it, I'm sure I'd be great! Oh, you mean I could learn it _now_? Um, sorry, gotta go do other things. These typos won't create themselves.

**chantinghome:**  
we all appreciate your sacrifice, although your potential contributions to the field of piano are surely mourned

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
lol, let's pretend I even know how many keys are on a piano (okay it's 88 WHY DO I KNOW THAT)

**puckstothenet:**  
it's an easy number to remember. I'm not sure I could tell you how many strings are on a guitar. Five?

**absolutelynotalion:**  
the ones you'rep robably thinking of have six, but there are a lot of different species of guitars

**sacon:**  
Species Of Guitars is gonna be my post-retirement small business folly that lasts precisely 16 weeks before folding in an embarrassing collapse that I will blame entirely on my clone

**chantinghome:**  
what are you gonna sell there?

**sacon:**  
brain teasers and music no one has ever heard of, including me (or any of you)

**puckstothenet:**  
that won't be hard when it comes to me. The only thing I listen to is college radio. If it's not a local indie band or Way Too Much Morrissey, I'm not familiar with any of it.

**diquesdick:**  
this is true. I once trolled puck by describing current Top 40s songs badly and she asked me if it was by Tom Petty.

**puckstothenet:**  
look, you don't know life until you listen to a radio station that identifies 75% of all the songs they play before or after they do it. I can't go back to finding out who sang a song a decade after the first time I hear it get airtime. I can't. I won't.

**karlsgod:**  
definitely don't change. I love how when I make yet another cheesy vid to the latest Taylor Swift song, you tell me this song choice is unexpected and refreshing.

Also, at this point, you might just want to pre-emptively listen to all Taylor Swift songs, I think you'll like them.

**puckstothenet:**  
She's too prolific. I can only keep up with music acts who put out records every five years.

my superpower: being shocked by the music they play over the intercom in grocery stores. "I know this song, karl had luc chantal blink to rhythm of this bridge!"

**chantinghome:**  
I liked the album she put out when she turned 30, even though all that really happens when you turn 30 is you start getting a lot of mail from people who want to sell you life insurance. 

I mean, sure, yes, there's revenge fantasies, that was part was true. The rest of us just don't get the opportunity to make music videos about ours, sadly.

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
sometimes you gotta be the revenge fantasy music video you want to see in the world

**chantinghome:**  
you're right. I have only myself to blame. Time to get a'casting my award-winning music video!

**sacon:**  
I call the part of being the plastic troll toy doll in the background. My stomach gem must be yellow or I'll walk out.

**chantinghome:**  
Your terms are acceptable.

**puckstothenet:**  
all right, time for me to go be horizontal for a while. see yall tomorrow

**sweatpantsnopants:**  
see ya!

**karlsgod:**  
bye!

**Author's Note:**

> [this post on dreamwidth](https://lannamichaels.dreamwidth.org/1080264.html); [this post on tumblr](https://lannamichaels.tumblr.com/post/189179564995/my-apologies-to-superstitionhockey-beep-boop)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Beep Boop](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22574380) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods), [frecklebombfic (frecklebomb)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frecklebomb/pseuds/frecklebombfic)


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